


The Girl With The Raven Hair

by LilithDuh



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 17:48:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20586539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilithDuh/pseuds/LilithDuh
Summary: A collection of one shots that may string together? Who knows yet.





	The Girl With The Raven Hair

_It's not a silly little moment_   
_ It's not the storm before the calm_   
_ This is the deep and dyin' breath of_   
_ This love we've been workin' on_

Zelda sat in the office she shared with her sister, perched stiffly on the formal Victorian couch they reserved for visiting with clients who needed a little more intimacy when planning the funerals of their loved ones than their shared desk provided. Zelda hated the couch; she found it dreadfully uncomfortable, but tonight it would do just fine. She didn’t need comfort. The fire burned low but she didn’t bother to get up and add another log. She didn’t care if the room went dark or cold; in fact, she preferred it that way. There were at least ten young women camped in her living room, one in Sabrina’s room, and six more strewn about the guest beds. Was this what her life had come to? The thought soured her stomach; she was the spinster school marm not to be trusted with her niece’s safety, not Mary Wardwell. She felt the hint of bitter laughter bubble in her throat at the thought of the woman. Mary Wardwell. She had no idea who Mary Wardwell was.

She hadn’t noticed how hard she was clutching her hands together until she broke the skin. The feeling of the warm liquid, her own blood, in her right palm took her off guard. How quickly she’d grown reaccustomed to the cold. Just as the flames gave in and burned out she thought she felt a hint of - something - in the air, but of course that wasn’t possible. Lilith was gone, and so was Mary. Not that Mary was any of her concern; she didn’t know the woman, she’d never been with the woman despite the body Lilith had so selfishly stolen to manipulate her family, nearly kill her niece, and destroy her entire religion.

No, that’s not how it happened, Zelda muttered under her breath, fighting against her own pious leanings and prejudices. Lilith had been a victim of the church. So had Sabrina, the other children at the academy. Zelda, herself, had been a victim of the church. Instead of releasing the grip on her own hand, she tightened it. She wanted to feel the pain her perfectly filed nails brought her; the points digging into flesh made raw by her own doing. The same kind of pain her husband used to bring her in the name of pleasure. The pain Lilith refused her so many times in the name of love. At least that was a pain she could control. Zelda’s thoughts raced back and forth between the children sleeping soundly in her house, her husband, Lilith, the Dark Lord. What next? How would she figure this out, as she had promised her little sister? It wasn’t lost on Zelda that Hilda was the only woman who’d managed to even sort of come out of the whole ordeal unscathed. Of course, she was affected, but she was far more intelligent than Zelda when it came to keeping a respectful distance from the church and the power her older sister so badly craved.

_Can't seem to hold you like I want to_   
_ So I can feel you in my arms_   
_ Nobody's gonna come and save you_   
_ We pulled too many false alarms_   
_ We're goin' down_   
_ And you can see it too_   
_ We're goin' down_   
_ And you know that we're doomed_   
_ My dear_   
_ We're slow dancing in a burnin' room_

Zelda squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath as the memories flooded her mind again; an assault on her senses. All legs and arms and hair as she remembered what it had been like, the last time she was with Lilith. As fucked up as it was, Lilith provided Zelda with far more affection and true love than Faustus ever had. So what if she’d lied about her identity, made her fall in love with a dead woman, threatened her family - threatened her? She reached for the highball glass on the table next to her with her unscathed hand and took a long swig of the brown liquid, reveling in the burn of the whisky all the way down her throat. The woman abandoned clawing at her own palm in favor of biting her already short nails down to the quick as the glass balanced in her lap, her mind a million miles away from the dimly lit office in Greendale. It might as well have been in hell alongside Lilith, burning in eternal, delicious damnation- but of course Lilith had abandoned her in the desecrated church in favor of her crown and her throne. She saw no way to come back from this one. Her religion had betrayed her, the husband she thought she could play had played her, Lilith had left her. Zelda silently, miserably took stock of her life, of every strict study and pious decision and romantic indiscretion that led her to this night, terribly alone in the middle of a full house, without the two things she had grown to love more than life itself: the church of night and Lilith. Why had she lied to Hilda? Why on earth had she said as high priestess, she’d figure it out? She had nothing figured out; she wasn’t even sure she was on solid ground anymore.

  
She entertained the thought of getting on her knees to pray for a moment, but quickly gave it up. A new sense of loneliness ringing through her, Zelda tucked her black floral kimono closer to her body and covered her chest, lined perfectly in her favorite blue satin nightgown. She wanted to rip the garments off of her body and burn them; purge her skin of both Lilith and Faustus, but what good would that do? Faustus would still make her wretch, Lilith would still make her ache. She wanted to renounce them both, but in the name of what? She had nothing but the ruins of what they’d done to her life. How could she be so blind? She thought she had found power with Lilith; that she could win over Faustus, that she had agency. Lilith stripped it from her when she made her a pawn in her little game for the throne in hell. Had the Spellmans ever mattered to Lilith? Would she be as cruel and ruthless as Sammael, or would she be different?

_I was the one you always dreamed of_   
_ You were the one I tried to draw_   
_ How dare you say it's nothing to me_   
_ Baby, you're the only light I ever saw_   
_ I'll make the most of all the sadness_   
_ You'll be a bitch because you can_   
_ You try to hit me, just hurt me_   
_ So you leave me feeling dirty_   
_ 'Cause you can't understand_   
_ We're goin' down_   
_ And you can see it too_   
_ We're goin' down_   
_ And you know that we're doomed_   
_ My dear_   
_ We're slow dancing in a burnin' room_

And even still, Zelda wondered when she might see Lilith again, or what she would look like. Her heart sank as she thought of Mary Wardwell, of what was going to happen to the poor woman now that Lilith had no need to inhabit her body. Did she have family who would miss her? Had Lilith kept up a front with Mary’s loved ones? Zelda let her mind wander to Lilith parading around as Mary, gritting her teeth through brunch with old girlfriends or suffering through a conversation with the woman’s siblings. Who would take care of her house, or replace her at school, or - Zelda stopped herself short at her last thought as the tears burned behind her eyes. She would not cry for Lilith. She would not cry for Faustus. She, still, would not let them win. Tonight she would stay up and keep watch over her wards, over the children who trusted her, the children she would have to lead into a whole new world come morning. She would stand guard like Saint Germaine herself. If Lilith and Faustus thought they’d experienced hell fire, they were wrong.

  
Zelda opened her eyes and finally registered the chill that had overtaken her office; it felt almost as cold as the embalming room and body storage. Perhaps her sweet Lilith was still there, watching over her silently from the shadows as Zelda broke in half in the middle of the night by herself. It would be so like Lilith to stand by and watch; to test her somehow by seeing if she could hold herself together by a thread. Wasn’t that always the game? How smart can Zelda be? How cunning can Zelda be? How proper and pious can Zelda be? Zelda thought of launching the highball glass across the room just to watch the crystal shatter against the wall, but she didn’t. Instead she sat perfectly still, perfectly upright, against the uncomfortable Victorian couch in the middle of her office, staring at the darkened hearth in front of her as she lie in wait for morning. Surely morning would come; that was the only thing Zelda could trust.

_Go cry about it, why don't you_   
_ My dear, we're slow dancin' in a burnin' room_   
_ Burnin' room, burnin' room_   
_ Don't you think we outta know by now?_   
_ Don't you think we shoulda learned somehow?_


End file.
